4 ms·

Author doesn't seem to know exactly how successful the Soviet Union was with this tactic. In four years - 1929 to 1933 - it transformed from an agrarian country

Author doesn't seem to know exactly how successful the Soviet Union was with this tactic. In four years - 1929 to 1933 - it transformed from an agrarian country, devastated by wars, to world second industrial power. Just a few years later USSR was capable of outproducing in many areas the whole of Europe under fascist control. As a side node gamification drives me mad. IMHO only an idiot would care about made up "achievements".

mjn 14y ago
True, that's the pro argument (I'm the author of the linked essay). I think it was clearly unsuccessful at the bit where it was supposed to drive intrinsic motivation and worker autonomy, though. The USSR did manage to pull off a crash industrialization, but was it really "socialist competition" or game-like? Part of my argument, though I make it more clearly in an expanded, short-paper version of this essay [1], is that the "gamification" part devolved into just regular old Stalinist command-and-control: production quotas and such, with a thin facade of worker autonomy and "voluntary" competition spread across it. That's one of the things people worry about with modern gamification as well, that a "game" that's a mandatory part of your job is not really much of a game, and more like old-fashioned, top-down control than the gamification consultants' uplifting rhetoric would like you to believe (e.g. http://articles.latimes.com/2011/oct/19/local/la-me-1019-lopez-disney-20111018 http://articles.latimes.com/2011/oct/19/local/la-me-1019-lop...). [1] http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2115483 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2115483
- alive-or-not 14y ago
  The Soviet economy was based on money a lot less than US or even socialist Denmark. An average family would have enough savings to buy pretty much everything they wanted (excluding luxury stuff, like holiday abroad or a limousine), but the only place they were legally allowed to buy most stuff were state-owned companies. A family would have to wait say 15 years in a queue to buy an apartment, 7 years for a car and a couple of years for a TV, vacuum cleaner or a washing machine. This is one place where a high achiever could "cash" on his hard work, as he may be allowed to buy stuff w/o waiting. Generally reputation, favors, networking played a bigger role in Soviet economy and hard work could help with those. Nice article BTW ;)
networked 14y ago
>As a side node gamification drives me mad. IMHO only an idiot would care about made up "achievements". Considering how token economies [1] are generally successful as motivators (HN karma, anyone?) I'd say this has less to do with idiocy and more with the "human nature". BTW, if anyone wants a good, quick introduction to the criticism of gamification I can recommend the Errant Signal video on the subject [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Token_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Token_economy [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWfMjQKXZXk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWfMjQKXZXk
- caf 14y ago
  I'd say military decorations are a particularly convincing example.
  - robinh 14y ago
    Would in-game achievements also count?
kostya-kow 14y ago
> As a side node gamification drives me mad. IMHO only an idiot would care about made up "achievements". Idiots make an overwhelming majority of population.
- avmich 14y ago
  Idiots include also that vocal part of population longing for - and getting - Nobel prizes. One ought to realize how different SU was in 20s, 50s, even 70s from Russia today. People in SU thought about themselves and their country very similarly as it is in US now - the most progressive country, and of course, the smartest and overall best people. Little doubt about that. Tokens were much more serious then - in US one says "if you smart, you should be rich", in SU it was "if you're good, you can perhaps show an Order" - and they weren't easy to get. Imagine the life in the South, pictured in "Gone with the wind", without slavery - because almost everybody was in the same conditions - and stimulus responses will be different. Again, what use would be for a pile of cash in SU? Not much - you can't buy proportionally, since the whole economy is targeted to "regular people", and you'd get people looking at you funny pretty soon.
  - tatumizer 14y ago
    "if you're good, you can perhaps show an Order" ??? Is it your wild guess? Who told you this nonsense? Gamification was executed so badly - it was complete absurd. It was anti-motivation rather than a motivation. Everything was fake, everybody ridiculed it, no one ever taken it seriously within my memory (since mid-60s).
elteto 14y ago
At what price? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivization_in_the_Soviet_Union http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivization_in_the_Soviet_... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
Zigurd 14y ago
Re "only an idiot would care about made up 'achievements'" Napoleon said about military medals: "With such baubles, men are led." And yet, even in this forum, you will probably find some people eager to explain how that's not the same at all. In designing any system of incentives you have to figure in, or be fortunate to get right, how irrational people are about incentives. The market is a darwinian engine for optimizing irrational responses. Sometimes that's brilliant, and sometimes it isn't.

mjn 14y ago

True, that's the pro argument (I'm the author of the linked essay). I think it was clearly unsuccessful at the bit where it was supposed to drive intrinsic motivation and worker autonomy, though. The USSR did manage to pull off a crash industrialization, but was it really "socialist competition" or game-like? Part of my argument, though I make it more clearly in an expanded, short-paper version of this essay [1], is that the "gamification" part devolved into just regular old Stalinist command-and-control: production quotas and such, with a thin facade of worker autonomy and "voluntary" competition spread across it. That's one of the things people worry about with modern gamification as well, that a "game" that's a mandatory part of your job is not really much of a game, and more like old-fashioned, top-down control than the gamification consultants' uplifting rhetoric would like you to believe (e.g. http://articles.latimes.com/2011/oct/19/local/la-me-1019-lopez-disney-20111018 http://articles.latimes.com/2011/oct/19/local/la-me-1019-lop...). [1] http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2115483 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2115483

alive-or-not 14y ago
The Soviet economy was based on money a lot less than US or even socialist Denmark. An average family would have enough savings to buy pretty much everything they wanted (excluding luxury stuff, like holiday abroad or a limousine), but the only place they were legally allowed to buy most stuff were state-owned companies. A family would have to wait say 15 years in a queue to buy an apartment, 7 years for a car and a couple of years for a TV, vacuum cleaner or a washing machine. This is one place where a high achiever could "cash" on his hard work, as he may be allowed to buy stuff w/o waiting. Generally reputation, favors, networking played a bigger role in Soviet economy and hard work could help with those. Nice article BTW ;)

networked 14y ago

>As a side node gamification drives me mad. IMHO only an idiot would care about made up "achievements". Considering how token economies [1] are generally successful as motivators (HN karma, anyone?) I'd say this has less to do with idiocy and more with the "human nature". BTW, if anyone wants a good, quick introduction to the criticism of gamification I can recommend the Errant Signal video on the subject [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Token_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Token_economy [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWfMjQKXZXk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWfMjQKXZXk

caf 14y ago
I'd say military decorations are a particularly convincing example.
- robinh 14y ago
  Would in-game achievements also count?

kostya-kow 14y ago

> As a side node gamification drives me mad. IMHO only an idiot would care about made up "achievements". Idiots make an overwhelming majority of population.

avmich 14y ago
Idiots include also that vocal part of population longing for - and getting - Nobel prizes. One ought to realize how different SU was in 20s, 50s, even 70s from Russia today. People in SU thought about themselves and their country very similarly as it is in US now - the most progressive country, and of course, the smartest and overall best people. Little doubt about that. Tokens were much more serious then - in US one says "if you smart, you should be rich", in SU it was "if you're good, you can perhaps show an Order" - and they weren't easy to get. Imagine the life in the South, pictured in "Gone with the wind", without slavery - because almost everybody was in the same conditions - and stimulus responses will be different. Again, what use would be for a pile of cash in SU? Not much - you can't buy proportionally, since the whole economy is targeted to "regular people", and you'd get people looking at you funny pretty soon.
- tatumizer 14y ago
  "if you're good, you can perhaps show an Order" ??? Is it your wild guess? Who told you this nonsense? Gamification was executed so badly - it was complete absurd. It was anti-motivation rather than a motivation. Everything was fake, everybody ridiculed it, no one ever taken it seriously within my memory (since mid-60s).

elteto 14y ago

At what price? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivization_in_the_Soviet_Union http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivization_in_the_Soviet_... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

Zigurd 14y ago

Re "only an idiot would care about made up 'achievements'" Napoleon said about military medals: "With such baubles, men are led." And yet, even in this forum, you will probably find some people eager to explain how that's not the same at all. In designing any system of incentives you have to figure in, or be fortunate to get right, how irrational people are about incentives. The market is a darwinian engine for optimizing irrational responses. Sometimes that's brilliant, and sometimes it isn't.